


three thousand and one

by rire



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Fix-It, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 20:23:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19047742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rire/pseuds/rire
Summary: No one is sure if Tony will wake up, least of all Tony himself. Still, there’s an unyielding presence at his bedside, keeping him company with the most mundane and illustrious stories.





	three thousand and one

**Author's Note:**

> endgame compliant, but the canon diverges before the funeral, for obvious reasons. i just love tony and his lil family and i want them to be happy and Alive

Tony can’t move. It’s not the first time this has happened. Throughout his illustrious superhero career, he’s been tied to chairs, trapped in caves, crushed under buildings, and he’s always gotten out alive. 

This is the first time he’s not sure if he wants to. 

Honestly? He’s tired as hell. He’d seen the light. Pepper had told him he could rest. Still, there was the distant crying of a boy that kept him holding on tight. A boy who wouldn’t give up, who had to be held back from Tony’s dying body as tears streamed down his dirt-stained face.

He can’t see anything, can barely feel anything, but it’s the voice of that same boy that rings clear through his muddled senses.

“Hey, Mr. Stark.” A pause. “It’s me again. It’s Peter. Um, I’m sure I’m not number one on the list of people you’d want to wake up to. I’m not entirely sure I’m even on the list? But, um… they moved you to this hospital, ‘cause this was the only place with good enough facilities, and they’ve got all this cool new Wakandan tech that they use, but it’s like, five hours away from the lakehouse. But don’t worry— I’m here. I’ll keep you updated. About Pepper, and Morgan, and everyone.”

Tony wants to respond, but he’s pretty sure he stopped following halfway through the kid’s second sentence. Everything sounds muffled, like he’s underwater. Or extremely hungover. The only thing that registers is that Peter is okay, that Pepper and Morgan are okay. Peter keeps talking, and he lets the familiar comfort of the kid’s voice lull him back to sleep. 

-

Of course, Peter is also there the next time he drifts back into semi-wakefulness. This time he’s slightly more aware of his surroundings. The walls are white. There are tubes in his left arm. He can’t feel them. He can’t feel his right arm, either, and that’s when he realizes he doesn’t have one anymore. There’s some scarring on the right side of his face, bandages over his forehead. Peter sits next to his good side, cross-legged in the visitor’s chair, wearing a red hoodie and jeans with his backpack abandoned in a heap on the floor. Tony isn’t sure how he can see all this. His own eyes are closed, body immobile, but it feels like he’s halfway in and halfway out of his own body, an unwelcome spectator.

“Morgan misses you,” says Peter. “She misses you a lot, even though she doesn’t get what’s going on. You know what she said to me? She said, ‘Peter, I wish  _ I  _ could sleep for months. Then I wouldn’t have to do any of my homework.’” His speech is punctuated with a laugh, the humorless kind, that sounds like it’s been involuntarily tugged out of him. “She’s just like you.”

_ Smart girl,  _ Tony wants to joke.  _ Be street smart, not book smart. _

“Don’t worry, I’ve been helping her with homework. She’s learning double-digit subtraction now. It’s going great.” 

Well. If Morgan’s going to have a math tutor, then Tony sure is glad it’s the kid who refused to take a trip to Germany simply because he had homework. Although he’s sure Peter’s busy with his own schoolwork, and decathlon, and applying for college, and being the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. Tony wishes he wouldn’t come here to visit all the time.

“We’re just hoping you wake up soon,” Peter confides. “Well, me and Morgan, I guess, are the only ones left.” 

Tony isn’t surprised to hear that Pepper’s name is not on the list. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love him more than anyone, only that she’s been by his side long enough, seen the world bare its ugly teeth for long enough, to learn that hope isn’t always worth holding onto. In fact, Tony is glad she’s being practical about the whole thing. No one is sure if he will wake up, least of all Tony himself. Still, there’s an unyielding presence at his bedside, keeping him company with the most mundane and illustrious stories. A kid who’s seen more than his fair share of how ugly the world can be, yet still holds onto hope in his uncalloused hands. 

“You brought me back,” says Peter, so quiet it’s almost inaudible. “I just want to bring you back, too. So that we’re even.” 

-

The passage of time loses meaning. He’s not sure when he swirls back into consciousness again, that strange floating state where he can see and hear things but isn’t quite inside of his own body. Peter is there again, jacket thrown on haphazardly over his Iron Spider suit. Upon closer inspection, Peter’s sporting a few bruises on his face, plus a cut that looks fresh. Tony wants to reprimand him for being careless, but no words come out. 

“How’re you feeling, Mr. Stark?” asks Peter. 

_ Me?  _ thinks Tony, incredulously.  _ No. You don’t get to worry about  _ me _ when you’re looking like that. _

“Me? I’m okay.” Peter punctuates the lie with a groan as he sits down in the chair next to Tony. “Went on patrol, stuff happened. Occupational hazard. Um, the web shooter malfunctioned, I think?”

Guilt drenches Tony like cold water.

“Which is totally not your fault, by the way. I was playing around with that stuff on my own.”

Still. Tony should have been there. 

“I’ll be okay, though. Got the bad guys in the end. It’s all gucci, Mr. Stark.”

Tony would roll his eyes if he could.

Peter clears his throat, looks down at the ground. “Happy told me that you— that you wouldn’t have, you know, done what you did if you hadn’t known— that I was gonna be there. After you were gone. I don’t really know why you would feel that way. I mean, I’m just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. I went to space, once. I died. I don’t know how to— I don’t know how to do this. Without you.”

_ I’m here,  _ Tony wants to say. So badly. 

“Hey, do you mind if I crash here? Just for tonight? It takes ages to swing back home, and I— I kind of busted my shoulder, a little? I’ll set an alarm, so I’ll be out once the nurse gets here in the morning. Just. Just gonna… lie down for a bit here.”

He folds his jacket into a vague shape of a pillow and curls up on the ground. It’s going to be awful for his shoulder, even with super healing. Tony’s chest aches. He gathers all his energy into moving just one, any part of his body. It doesn’t work. Now would be a fantastic time to have Wanda’s powers.

“Aw, shit, that hurt.” Peter gets back up, having learned the lesson the hard way. “Yeah, you know what? I’ll just sleep in the chair.” 

He lets the sound of Peter’s snoring guide him into an unwilling sleep.

-

“Hey, Mr. Stark? I want to ask you something.” 

_ Go for it,  _ Tony says, in his mind’s eye. Another day, another one-sided conversation with the kid in his head, since he can’t have them out loud. 

“How’d it feel when half the world turned to dust? How did you… move on, from that?”

A chill runs through Tony’s spine, even at the mention of it.

_ I didn’t,  _ thinks Tony.  _ I couldn’t. I had to. But I never did.  _ Even five years later, a photograph on his kitchen shelf, a wound in his chest that never quite healed, was all the reason he needed to risk everything to invent time travel. 

“Because that’s kind of how I feel right now. I mean, not to make light of everyone in the universe who was gone. But it feels like that. Right now. In here.” Peter places a hand over his own chest. His voice cracks. “Feels like half of this is gone, when you are.”

Tony thought that he could never want to wrap his arms around Peter more than he did in the moment when Strange’s portal brought him back. He was wrong.

“Um— sorry. I’m sorry, Mr. Stark. I know I shouldn’t talk like you’re gone. Because if I do, then that means— no, I just can’t think about it. It hurts too much.” 

_ Kid, you’re not the only one that’s hurting. _

Peter blinks furiously, looks away to collect himself, before turning back with a smile on his face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin the atmosphere. Anyway, I guess I’ll tell you about my day? So me and Ned are working on fixing up the web shooters. We’re not gonna change the suit or anything, because you made it so great, it’s just perfect, Mr. Stark. I kind of miss the new car smell, though. And also there’s, um. Maybe this is TMI, but there’s a girl? One of my friends, MJ, I think she’s kind of into me? She asked me out to the movies tonight but I had to be here so I could tell you— oh. Oh, man. I shouldn’t have done that, should I?”

_ No,  _ Tony groans.  _ No, you should not have.  _ Not that Tony himself is an expert at romance in any way, shape, or form, but if even  _ he  _ wouldn’t have done it, then that was saying something.

Peter brightens up. “Oh, and Morgan’s birthday party is coming up! She’s turning six! Isn’t that great? It’s gonna be at the lake house. There’s gonna be a barbeque, and Morgan’s friends from class are gonna be there, and the Avengers are gonna be there, or the ones who can make it, anyway— can you imagine? Being six years old and going to your friend’s house and meeting The Hulk? Oh, and Happy’s making cheeseburgers for everybody. So if you could make it, that’d be, um. That’d be great.” 

It’s then that his signature selfishness comes back, full force. Tony can’t believe he kept it at bay for that long. He can’t believe he didn’t realize sooner how much he wants to fix up Peter’s suit with him in the lab, watch the gears in his young brain turn and the way his face would light up with a new idea. To celebrate his daughter’s sixth birthday, stuff down as many cheeseburgers as they could until their stomachs burst, wipe the crumbs off her smile as Pepper sighed and shook her head. He’s forgotten what food tastes like, and he wants to know, wants to remember. The smell of smoke, the chatter in his backyard of small talk between his colleagues, friends, everyone else in the unlikely family that had stumbled into his life over the years.

This is not the end. Tony has fought too long and too hard, wrangled his life back against too many impossible circumstances, for it to end here, surrounded by tubes and white walls. He had three thousand reasons to live, and one more at his bedside. He was not going to give up any of them.

The index finger of his left hand moves. Peter doesn’t notice, blabbering on and on. Tony works his way up to a whole hand, and then his entire left arm, and that’s when Peter notices. Tony cracks his eye open to see Peter’s jaw dropped to the floor with shock.

“Oh my God,” says Peter, jumping up so quickly he knocks his chair to the ground. “Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark? Did you just  _ move?” _

“I’d do anything,” says Tony, voice rough from lack of use, “for a cheeseburger.”

Immediately, Peter throws his arms around Tony. His small frame shakes around Tony as he sobs.

“You’re here,” he says through tears. “You’re really here.”

“Oh,” says Tony, teasingly. “This is nice.”

Peter only cries harder, at that. Holds Tony so tight he feels like his back will break. Tony lets him, only reaches a slow hand up to stroke through his hair in what he hopes is a soothing manner.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” says Peter, looking up at him with wet eyes. “I have so much to tell you.”

Tony brushes a stray curl of hair away of his face. “Nothing I haven’t already heard.”

Peter’s eyes go wide. “You were listening? The whole time?”

Two nurses walk in, probably alerted by the many medical devices Tony is connected to. One of them tugs Peter aside, telling him they had to run some vitals, alert his immediate family, et cetera.

“He can stay,” says Tony. “In fact, if I had to pick, he’d be number one on my list.”

Peter’s eyes start to water again. “Mr. Stark,” he says, voice wobbly.

“He can stay outside,” the nurse replies. “Doctor’s orders.”

“Alright, then go home, Pete,” says Tony to Peter, right before the nurses obscure his field of vision. “Go on, skedaddle. Your Aunt misses you. We’ll talk more tomorrow, okay?” 

_ Tomorrow.  _ A concept that slipped through his fingers like dust for five years, and fought tooth and nail to bring back. Peter had fought for it, too, in his own way. Tony opens his left hand, palm up, and Peter takes it in his own.

“Yeah,” says Peter, bottom lip trembling, but despite that, a grin spreads across his face. “Tomorrow sounds good.” 

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on [twitter!](http://twitter.com/redbeantofu)


End file.
